


from the love to the lightning

by orphan_account



Series: you and me forever as we are now [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 07:53:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9538631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Some aspects of marriage are predictable. Others come unexpectedly. Eliza and Alexander learning each other.





	

The night before her wedding is freezing. Eliza lays squished between her two sisters in the middle of her bed with the covers pulled up tightly to her chin. They look like a row of Russian dolls: Angelica, being the tallest of the three, has most of her head exposed to the air, but Peggy’s eyes are just barely visible. Eliza breathes steadily through her exposed nose. Her breath makes tiny puffs of fog in the mid-December air. Next to her, Angelica purses her lips and exhales steadily for several seconds, forming a butt in the near-darkness. Only the single candle on the bedside table illuminates the minuscule droplets.  


“‘Liza,” Peggy says. Her words are muffled by the fabric covering her face.  


Eliza hums in response.  


“Are you nervous?”  


It’s a childish question, something Eliza can imagine coming out of a five-year-old Peggy’s mouth. Somehow it is appropriate. Eliza feels childish. She thinks she is prepared for marriage, but it is the kind of preparation one feels before the performance of a Christmas play, as if she will catch stage fright at the last moment and forget all her lines.  


If there is a script to marriage, if there are lines to memorize, they have been given to Eliza by her sisters. Sharing a bed makes no difference to her; Eliza has learned how to maintain her grip on her share of the covers, how to retaliate for Angelica’s kicks to the shin, how to ease out of bed without waking Peggy. The Schuyler family is wealthy enough that their daughters had not shared a bed out of necessity, but the sisters are close, and on stormy nights Eliza often rushed to Angelica’s bed to huddle, trembling, against her older sister. After Peggy was born, both Angelica and Eliza would find themselves awoken after midnight to the sound of thunder and their younger sister’s bare feet pattering into their room. Eliza is accustomed to sharing her food, her bed, her privacy. These compose the script of marriage, she supposes. 

And so, when Peggy repeats her question, Eliza shakes her head as well as she can manage from underneath the mound of blankets that cover them.  


“No. I feel a bit — helpless, actually, but not in a bad way. As if I couldn’t stop myself from loving him even if I wanted to.”  


She doesn’t blush; it’s true, after all, but Eliza is grateful for the darkness anyway. It gives her space to say things that she couldn’t in the light.  


~  


Eliza finds out quite quickly that she is wrong: she is not prepared for marriage, could never be prepared even if she had rehearsed for a year. Life separates into a before and an after, and the _before_ script does not apply at all to the _after_. Yes, in many respects, marriage is as she had imagined. It is a thrill to have her own space to do with as she sees fit. And yes, both her mother and Angelica had prepared her for her ‘wifely duties,’ as her mother had described it. Thankfully Angelica had elaborated on her mother’s strained and succinct explanation, or Eliza would not have known what to do when Alexander had parted her legs and descended on her with his _mouth_ first. But she had not expected her life with Alexander to be so very different.  


For one thing, he is messy. Of the three girls, Peggy is the least organized, but even her room is presentable at the worst of times. Alexander leaves rooms looking like a hurricane has passed through. His office is the worst: stacks of documents and books heaped in various piles on the floor and desk, but somehow papers make their way to the parlor and dining room as well. For the most part Eliza doesn’t mind. Every night after he finishes what must be his hundredth letter to Congress — for Alexander does not stop working for the war effort even during his leave — he passes through the house, collecting papers into an inky pile and depositing them haphazardly into drawers. Then he joins Eliza in bed.  


She stays up for him, most nights, though she expects that this will change when their marriage feels less new. But she is fascinated by watching him, her husband, existing near and around her in a way that Eliza has not experienced until now. It is strange to dress with him in the room; Eliza had made even Angelica and Peggy turn their backs when they undressed as children. She likes to watch Alexander as he readies himself for bed, stripping off his shirt and breeches unashamedly. Although he is strong from fighting, his hips and stomach have an endearing softness to them that Eliza prefers to the leanness of his arms and thighs. Sometimes she compares their bodies — the places where he is straight and she curves, where he is hairy and she is smooth. She feels simultaneously exposed and freed, bare before him in every way. On the third morning she rises naked from the bed and wiggles her hips as she leaves the room to wash off the activities of the night before. Alexander’s laugh whisks around the door as it swings shut behind her. On the fourth morning she teases him as she dresses, sliding one hand up her body to her breasts before lacing up her dress and leaving him wanting. They make it to noon, and Eliza has to wipe down the dining room table twice before setting it for lunch.  


_Marriage is, on the whole, entirely unexpected_ , Eliza writes to Angelica. It is the best word she can think of, though it doesn’t quite capture everything — no word, she thinks, is enough to encompass what she feels when she wakes up on the fifth morning to Alexander nosing sleepily into her shoulder with his arm draped across her middle. The clock reads 8:15; they’ve slept later than usual. Alexander snuffles and burrows closer to shield his eyes from the sun.  


“Mornin’,” he whispers, though it comes out sounding more like an _mmph_ right into Eliza’s shoulder.  


She strokes his hair instead of responding. Eliza loves that she can touch him whenever she feels like it, loves the easy intimacy that comes with marriage. She wishes she knew as much as he does. Alexander had come to their bed with experience that Eliza could never have replicated — encounters with other women she knew about for certain, but Eliza suspected that there had been others, or at least one other, in the army. Never mind that now. Alexander has chosen her; that’s enough.  


But Eliza wants to learn. Alexander had moved down her body with such ease, that first night, kissing his way along bare skin until he reached her very center and licked into her until she’d nearly screamed. He’s done the same thing twice since, making her slick and eager for him before entering her with a drawn-out groan. Eliza allows herself a moment to think about her husband inside of her, the way Alexander slows down for her like he never does for anything else, the way he loses himself in bright and inexplicable feeling. She knows that feeling: Alexander draws it out of her with tongue and fingers. Eliza wants to give him the same thing he has given her. And more than that, she wants to know him in every way that she can.  


With this in mind, she goes to her desk, that fifth morning (after Alexander has twice brought her to climax), and removes a sheet of paper. In her sisterly wisdom Angelica had explained much on the eve of the wedding, after Peggy had gone to sleep and Angelica and Eliza had whispered together past midnight, but Eliza doubts that she remembers any of it. The night had been too laced with expectation.  


_Dear Angelica,_ Eliza begins, then stops. What she wants to do for Alexander cannot be too difficult to figure out — after all, Eliza supposes, it’s not an uncommon act. Is there a point, then, in reaching out to her sister? Eliza twirls the pen in her fingers until it slips and leaves a line across the stationery. She does not wish to appear naive, but neither does she wish to go in blind. She picks up her pen again.  


_As I wrote you before, she continues, marriage is unexpected. Which leads me to an unexpected (at least on my behalf; knowing you, you will have predicted this exact missive days ago) question. I have been made aware — by both an outside source and my own common sense — that there is a certain act which a woman can perform for a man with her mouth. The outside source is, of course, Alexander’s own performance of such an act on me, something I did not expect, but do highly appreciate and wish to return. I recall that you explained a few details, but the prospect of putting them into practice is rather daunting. While I do not necessarily assume that you have done this yourself (though I would deliver no judgment if that were the case), I am sure you know more than I of this matter; therefore, if you are willing to provide more information, I would be greatly in your debt. As always, dear sister, accept all the love I can offer._  


_Ever yours,  
_

_Eliza_

Eliza lets out her breath. Strangely enough, she feels very little shame as she seals the letter. Angelica has never been judgmental towards her sisters — though she is rarely stingy with her wrath towards others — and there is nothing untoward about Eliza’s desires. Her only regret upon sending the letter is that she forgot to include a postscript with a request for a quick response — after all, Alexander’s leave is up in two weeks, and Eliza hopes to practice several times before he departs.  


~  


She need not have feared. Angelica’s response arrives the next morning with the rest of the mail. Alexander flourishes a letter from Laurens, who is still stationed with the rest of their forces, and hurries off to his study to read it. Eliza lets him go. He will share any newsworthy contents of the letter with her later, and she is impatient to read Angelica’s reply.  


_Dearest Eliza,_  


_I must admit, I laughed when I saw that you had written me again, especially about such a matter. Most newly married women do not write their sisters twice within the first few days of marriage! But very few newly married women are like you, and very few married women ever have the desire to please their husbands so. More’s the pity._  
_As you thought, I do have some personal experience in this area, which I hope to bestow upon you here. Even so, do not try to act as an expert would; it will be obvious that you have little experience. Instead, let him guide you — this may even lend more ardor to the act. I would suggest, for your first attempt, to have him lay down upon the bed, though I encourage you to be more creative once you have had practice. My final piece of advice is to use your tongue more than you believe necessary, especially when you are first starting out and have not had practice in suppressing the reflex to gag._  
_This may seem like an arduous task, but I have learned to enjoy myself immensely, and I have great confidence in you to also gain enjoyment from the deed. Have a good time, dear sister._  


_Yours,_  


_Angelica,_

_P.S. I forgot to mention, be aware of the ideal end of this endeavor. Have a plan in mind._

Eliza frowns. The ideal end…? She couldn’t mean — oh. _Have a plan in mind_. Eliza runs through her options and decides to put the matter aside for the moment. Instead, she buries Angelica’s letter under a pile of other papers in her bedside table, mulling over the information. The door opens as she closes the drawer, making her jump, but she composes herself quickly and meets Alexander’s eyes. He’s grinning.  


“What news from Laurens?” Eliza asks.  


“He is assisting the General in my absence,” Alexander tells her. “But he’s having some trouble with a Lieutenant, some man named Lee who keeps bad-mouthing Washington behind his back.”  


“He is well otherwise, I hope?”  


“Yes, unhurt and well-fed, at least for the moment.”  


Eliza smiles. “I am glad to hear it.”  


Alexander tosses the letter aside and flops down next to Eliza on the bed. For a moment all is silent.  
They speak at the same time.  


“My Betsey,” Alexander says. “I’m glad I’m the one who got to marry you.”  


“What do you miss about the war?” Eliza asks. It is clear that he misses something. If he did not, he would not look so torn every time he receives news of the fighting.  


A pause, then: “You go,” says Eliza.  


“Answer the question, or finish my sentence?”  


“Both.”  


Alexander runs one hand through his hair. He doesn’t ask how she knows that he misses the war. Eliza wouldn’t be able to tell him if he had. Reaching out, Eliza beckons him closer and he obliges, scooting so that his head rests on her stomach and moves gently up and down with her breath.  


He speaks after a long moment. “I miss the purpose,” he says. “Being away feels stiff — like taking my hair down at the end of the day and letting it fall back into its proper place. I’ve never settled down.”  


Eliza can tell what he’s not saying — that settling down feels fragile, that he expects it to fall apart. That he is picturing coming home after the war and finding her gone. And even more, that he feels guilty for expecting it.  


Before she can say anything, though, Alexander is rolling onto his stomach and propping himself up on his elbows. “You make me want to try it. Settling down.”  


He means that she makes him want to trust her, build a life with her, even at the risk of turning around one day to find it in ashes. But right now they are a little flame, burning brightly, and Eliza prays that the ashes are far, far ahead of them.  


~

After supper Eliza busies herself with the washing up. When Alexander offers to help she declines, though for the past few days she has accepted and enjoyed the way that the ritual opens and closes the day, standing in comfortable silence together. The silence, too, is unexpected. When Alexander is not writing, he is talking, but with Eliza he pauses for these moments of quiet. Today the soft scribble of his pen fills the room and mingles with the crackle of the fire as Eliza scrubs their plates.  


When she has dried the last of the forks, Eliza strips to her shift in the middle of the kitchen. It takes Alexander approximately two and a half minutes to notice — she counts in her head from the moment that she begins to unlace her dress to the moment that her husband glances up and drops his pen. Eliza crosses wordlessly to his chair and kisses him. Alexander reciprocates enthusiastically, settling both hands on her waist. The thin shift barely protects her from the draft that slips underneath their door, and the fire is popping merrily across the room doesn’t quite prevent her from shivering, but Eliza refuses to stop kissing Alexander when he’s making those kinds of noises into her mouth.  


They’re there in the kitchen for what seems like an hour. By the time Eliza pulls back, Alexander is half-hard against her thigh and making tiny aborted thrusts against her. She sheds the rest of her clothes on the way to their bedroom. Alexander hurries after her and enters the room naked except for his socks. He looks ridiculous, covered in goosebumps and shivering in the doorway.  


"Close the door!” Eliza says. She’s already in bed, huddled under blankets. The fire burning low in their bedroom hearth crackles with the promise of heat.  


The door clicks shut as Alexander crosses to the bed and joins her beneath the covers.  


“Eliza,” Alexander begins, ever impatient, but she’s already ahead of him. Her hand slips down his body and closes around his cock, eliciting a sharp intake of breath. He hardens fully in her hand. It’s something Eliza still isn’t used to, this part of his body, so different from hers. She strokes up, once, wondering how different it feels for him. What is it like to want to be inside someone? Does he ever — and here she grows warm all over — wish to be in her position, to have someone inside him? Her hand stops moving as she considers.  


Alexander’s voice snaps her back. “Don’t tease, Betsey,” he pleads, and Eliza moves again, this time to push the covers down to the end of the bed. The room could not have grown warmer in the few minutes since they had entered, but Eliza feels hot all over. Her husband kneels, bringing his hands to rest warm and firm on her waist, moving his lips under her ear and down her neck. He bites down on her collarbone, playfully, and Eliza feels warmth pool between her legs. But this is not what she wants, not this time. She pulls away from Alexander and feels his questioning gaze upon her even before he opens his mouth.  


“Was that not alright?” he asks, brow slightly furrowed. This expression always makes him look younger, his eyes twice their usual size.  


“It was more than alright,” Eliza says, and the creases of his face smooth. “I just had, well, an idea — or more of a question.” Before he can ask what she wants, Eliza pushes him backwards towards the pillows splayed against the headboard. “Lay down,” she says.  


Obediently he stretches out before her, eyes glinting in his otherwise impassive face. With his toes about a foot away from the end of the bed, Eliza has plenty of space to situate herself between his knees and run her hand down his chest to stop just short of his cock, now bobbing interestedly towards his stomach. Alexander’s hips shift slightly, but he stays quiet.  


Eliza moves forward until she is positioned between his thighs, which fall farther apart of their own accord. Alexander is staring, mouth slightly open, hands clenched by his sides. “I want to taste you,” she says, and his eyes grow impossibly darker. With a deep breath Eliza steadies her hands on his thighs. They tremble beneath her fingertips. Leaning forward, she is stopped by Alexander’s voice.  


“Betsey,” he says, voice slightly hoarse. He swallows and tries again. “You don’t have to...I mean, I hope I haven’t made you feel like you’re obligated — ah!”  


Eliza closes her lips around the tip of his cock and Alexander’s words cut off with a groan. His skin, which is softer here, tastes salty and just a little bitter. She moves one hand to the base to steady him, leaving her other hand on his thigh and trying to remember Angelica’s letter. _Use your tongue more than you may believe necessary._ She tries it, flicking her tongue against the slit, and Alexander moans at that, his head falling back against the pillows. Eliza covers her teeth with her lips to try to take more, but she feels her jaw already beginning to ache. She pulls off, still steadying his cock with her left hand. At that, Alexander glances up, looking slightly alarmed at the prospect of her stopping, although he is trying to hide it behind concern.  


He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. Eliza smiles and licks from bottom to top before resuming her efforts, and Alexander’s vocalizations change from attempts at words to soft gasps. His hands flutter against the sheets, grasping and releasing them at intervals. Eliza feels herself growing wetter as she curls her lips back around her teeth and sinks down. Although she cannot take him all the way, she does her best, breathing through her nose and using her left hand to reach what she is unable to fit in her mouth. From somewhere above her head Alexander swears. His body is shaking with the effort of keeping still, and suddenly he fails, his hips stuttering involuntarily upwards and nearly choking Eliza, who pulls back with her eyes watering.  


“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he says, but Eliza looks at him with fire in her eyes and his own slide shut again. She likes that he relinquishes control for this, lets her take the lead. That is another surprise of marriage, Eliza realizes — the agency, the ability she has to make decisions for herself, for them, even, in this area at least, for him. She has the sudden urge to see just how much control Alexander will give her. This time when she sinks back down he cannot keep his hips still, and when she pulls off again he whines with disappointment, thrusting into the air, seeking friction. But Eliza is moving lower to lick at the crease of his thigh.  


Eliza experimentally takes one of his balls into her mouth, sucking gently, and Alexander cries out. He is always vocal, something that Eliza loves — his moans against her when his mouth is buried between her thighs, his exhaled _oh_ when he enters her, the gasps that punctuate thrusts. Now is no different. As she licks lower, probing at the sensitive skin behind his balls, her left hand still moving unconsciously on his cock, he begins to babble, “Oh, Eliza, Betsey, please, more, please,” and she obliges, moving back up to his cock and taking as much as she can into her mouth. Her right hand moves back down to where her tongue had just been, putting pressure on his perineum (she’s not entirely sure where the idea came from, but Alexander loves it), and her jaw is getting tired but he’s moaning so wonderfully, reduced to little ahs and short thrusts against her lips.  


He clutches suddenly at the sheets and Eliza reaches up with her hand to meet his. There’s a long moment when he shudders on the edge beneath her, and then he’s coming down her throat, gasping out, “Oh, _fuck_ , Eliza” in a voice gone rough and desperate. Eliza wants to see his face, but there’s so much sensation. It’s overwhelming. The bitter taste that had been on his skin intensifies in her mouth and Eliza almost pulls away, but it’s over quickly and she swallows with a slight twinge. Eliza pulls off and moves her lower jaw in a circle to stretch it. Looking up, she sees Alexander staring at her, his face open and satisfied and slightly worried.  


He says her name for the millionth time that night, but Eliza doesn’t mind. She hopes he says it so many times that she tires of it. “Thank you,” he says, tugging on her shoulder for her to join him.  


“My pleasure,” she replies. And it’s true, Eliza thinks as she crawls up the bed to join him. Her throat is a little sore and her knees ache from being in the same position and she is happy. But Alexander pulls away and sits up on one elbow.  


“That’s true,” he says, and before she realizes that he has picked up on the other meaning of her words, his fingers are sliding against her: a silent question. She answers it by mimicking his former position against the pillows. Alexander’s fingers work inside of her, curling against her in the way that his toes had curled when he came. It takes only a moment before she spasms around his fingertips. He withdraws his fingers from her gently and moves down the bed, positioning himself between her legs. Before she can protest, Alexander is licking along the seam of her, tonguing around her clit. Eliza is still sensitive from her previous orgasm and Alexander seems to know this, avoiding touching her directly. Instead, he gives her pressure from the side and presses a finger lightly against her opening, and before long she comes for a second time, this orgasm sharper and more intense, almost like the mix of pain and pleasure of thawing her hands under warm water after being out in the cold.  


He comes back to her side after that, curling in next to her with his head on her shoulder. Alexander spends so much time building walls for himself, walls out of words, pouring stone from his quill and mortar from his tongue. There are no walls here. They are left behind in his office — anywhere outside of this room, but Eliza knows he will put them on like armor when he leaves. Eliza sees him in every way without walls; she sees him moan and whimper, she expects that, in time, she will see him weep.  


She strokes his back now and feels him relax under her touch.  


“I enjoyed that,” Eliza begins.  


Alexander looks up at her in some surprise. “Really?”  


“Don’t look so shocked. It’s obvious that you enjoy giving me that pleasure.”  


A smile, then. “Of course. But I would not have expected you to feel the same.”  


“You underestimate me, then.”  


He turns his face back into her shoulder. Eliza barely hears his next words, murmured into her skin. “How did you know what to do?”  


“It’s not a great mystery,” Eliza laughs. “And I wrote Angelica.”  


“You wrote — what did she say?”  


The memory makes Eliza giggle. “She said to try other...positions...once I’ve had experience. I was thinking I might hang you upside down.”  


He feigns shock. “Eliza!” It hangs in the air for a second before she feels him shake with laughter against her side. Eliza looks down to see his eyes bright with mirth and feels his smile warm against her skin as if etched there.  


Sleep creeps up on them. Alexander makes one protest that it’s only three in the afternoon and he couldn’t possibly be away from his work for much longer, but Eliza shushes him. A moment later she hears a snuffling snore.  


Eliza’s mind feels as heavy as her eyes, but she forces herself awake. They have so little time together. This is their sixth day together; they have only ten more, less if Washington is in desperate need. A sharp ache grows in Eliza’s middle. She can go back to waking up alone, she can learn to cook for one, but she does not look forward to it, can already hear the lengthy silence of the house, can see the barrenness of the dining room table without its covering of scattered papers.  


~  


The final ten days pass quickly. The newness is still there — Eliza likes to kiss Alexander in various rooms just to remember that she can — but they’ve stopped having sex twice a day. On the eleventh morning — Christmas — they don’t have sex at all. Instead Eliza makes scrambled eggs and they eat them in bed and argue about which of them has to go get the salt shaker.  


“If you get it I’ll do that thing you like with my tongue,” Alexander says.  


“You’d do it anyway,” Eliza counters. He concedes the point. In the end, no one gets the salt, but Eliza makes Alexander do the dishes. 

On the sixteenth morning Eliza is nauseous. It is the day Alexander departs for Washington’s camp, and he’s in a rush to be off, bundling the few belongings he is bringing into a bag. All too soon he’s standing breathless at the door. He glances around the foyer as if he’ll see something he’s forgotten, but instead his eyes land on Eliza.  


“Be safe,” she manages to say, and then has to press her lips together to keep a shuddering breath from escaping. She is surprised at herself — after all, her father had described her as stoic when she was young, turning firm and unreadable in the face of strong emotion. He could never see how she burned, still, on the inside. Eliza finds that keeping herself contained is the best way to ensure that her emotions are hers alone. Again, marriage surprises her — even emotions are shared now.  


“Yes,” is all Alexander says. He leans in for a final kiss. He has been distant all morning, distracted by his regained sense of purpose, but Eliza feels his lips tremble for a brief moment and knows he too feels the loss. She had expected marriage to be full of I-love-yous, but they do not say it now. There is no need; it is contained in their kiss, in the glance Alexander throws over his shoulder as he rides away, in Eliza’s admonitions to be careful and his promise to obey.  


_Come home_ , she tells him, and that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Snow Patrol's song New York. I did my best with the timeline, but my only knowledge of American history comes from this musical so who knows if I got it all right (good time to practice your willing suspension of disbelief). This is my first fic, un-beta'd, don't drag me too hard <3


End file.
